![]() ![]() Having ascertained that, correct Andrerw → Andrew.Īndrew Wiles’ famous proof of Fermats last theorem…Ĭheck that the author is not deliberately using non-standard punctuation elsewhere in the text. Having ascertained that, correct profo → proof.Īndrerw Wiles’ famous proof of Fermat’s last theorem…Ĭheck that there is not some mathematician called Andrerw Wiles who gave another proof of FLT. This principle still seems completely appropriate in academic settings, with the caveats that academic writing is particularly likely to include unusual terminology or deliberately-chosen subtleties of wording, and (again) of erring on the side of caution, since accuracy is critical.Ī few examples and suggestions how to handle them:Īndrew Wiles’ famous profo of Fermat’s last theorem…Ĭheck that profo is not a technical or facetious term that the author is using elsewhere in the text, or that appears in other literature. What is an obvious typo? General-purpose style guides give guidelines like something which you are absolutely confident the author would have corrected, had they noticed it and which can’t be read in any other way than the corrected way. Adding a “” is even more distracting to the reader, is a bit harsh towards the original authors (drawing attention to a trivial mistake they made), and may be read as intentionally disrespectful to them. Leaving it in without a “” is distracting to the reader, and also makes it unclear whether the typo is due to you or the original authors. Meanwhile, all the negatives of replicating the typo still apply. Scientific accuracy and clarity is paramount literal typographical fidelity is no more important in academia than in most other fields. So I see no positive reason to treat the academic case differently from the non-academic. However, you should usually be well-qualified to judge this, as an academic in a field closely related to that of the writers you’re quoting. In an academic setting, you should certainly be extremely cautious in judging what’s really a typo, as comments on the question point out. Obvious typographic errors may be corrected silently (without comment or sic) unless the passage quoted is from an older work or a manuscript source where idiosyncrasies of spelling are generally preserved.Īnd I do not know any major style guide that differs from this. The Chicago Manual of Style, for instance, says: In non-academic contexts, this is pretty much universal practice. correcting theroem to theorem see below for more on this point. But only when you are 100% confident that they really are just trivial typos, e.g. secretaries and support staff) often appears structured and formal … The messages by professorial staff … appear short, to the point, and spontaneous.” (“Spontaneous” is a polite euphemism for “sloppy.A dissenting view from the other answers: Yes, it is fine to silently correct obvious typos that do not affect the subject matter. One of the earliest academic studies of the implicit messages contained in office email describes the president of a company replying to a formal, multiparagraph email from a junior staffer with two mostly uncapitalized sentences including, “one would think with an mis dept there they could to their own training.” (Misspelling a two-letter word is the ultimate power move.) A later study of emails sent within an academic department noted that “email text … written by staff at the lower ranks (e.g. The relationship between sloppiness and authority has been well-documented since the dawn of office email. Either way, the presence or absence of typos in an email-along with how polished and formal it seems-can usually tell you a great deal about the power dynamics between sender and recipient. At worst, they’re a deliberate power move-a signal to junior staffers that they aren’t worth the time it would take to correct the mistakes in an email before hitting send. At best, informal, typo-ridden messages sent from the top of a professional hierarchy to the bottom reflect the fact that bosses aren’t particularly concerned about coming across as sloppy to their subordinates. Those emails were my introduction to the subtle power cues embedded in workplace correspondence.
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